


Harrington

by nervousn8



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Billy Hargrove Fights Monsters Too, Billy Hargrove Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Lives, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Boys In Love, But Only a Little Bit - Freeform, Gay Billy Hargrove, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, No Dialogue, No Smut, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nervousn8/pseuds/nervousn8
Summary: Everything that Steve Harrington is: written from the ever-changing opinion of Billy Hargrove.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 86





	Harrington

Steve Harrington is, from what Billy first learns, a bitch.

Hagan and his bitch explain it in great detail- Harrington. His rise to power, his control of the school, and his subsequent fall when he ended up pussy-whipped for some girl with a missing best friend. Billy finds it pathetic, and he picks up the pieces that Harrington left with ease. Hagan was just waiting for someone to follow, Billy learns, and he situates the little crown on his head. It’s safe there, nestled amidst his curls.

He doesn’t see Harrington until school lets out that day- barely manages to catch a glimpse as he waits by the Camaro, but he sees him. All big brown eyes and sure smiles, and Billy understands why he was king. He’s got the easy confidence that guys follow without a thought, the casual charm that leaves girls tripping over themselves. Billy sees it, knows it’s there, but he knows that -even if Harrington were still king- he’d dethrone him with ease. Harrington isn’t a fighter. Maybe a smooth talker, sure, talked his way between the legs of most of the female student body, if what Hagan says is true, but he's not a fighter.

Billy sees it. Harrington is a bitch, too. Riding on daddy’s money and good looks, he’s never had to fight for anything. 

Even still, pussy-whipped and dethroned, he’s high enough on the popularity ladder that Billy keeps an eye on him. Makes sure Harrington knows he’s doing it, too, and boils red when he barely spares him a glance back. Doesn’t react when Billy checks his shoulder in the hallways, doesn’t even blink when Billy tries to steal his girl. He just throws an arm over her shoulders and leads her away, and it’s like Billy doesn’t even fucking exist. 

It goes on like that for all of Tuesday and Wednesday, too. Drives Billy absolutely insane because he’s large and he’s loud and Harrington won’t fucking _look at him._ Billy even joins the basketball team because Hagan told him Harrington is captain, and he makes a plan to steal the position right out from under him. He probably can’t, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to _try._

There’s a party on Halloween, some shitty thing with too many people and awful music, but there’s free alcohol and he doesn’t have to worry about Max tonight, so he goes. He keeps his chest out and the bruises on his back covered, and he beats Harrington’s keg stand record, and Harrington finally _looks at him._ He pulls his shades from his face in what Billy almost thinks might be fucking exasperation, but the way those brown eyes roll over the wet skin of Billy’s chest sets him on _fire._ It’s like it’s just them in that big room, the guitar flaring in the background, and then Harrington is gone with nothing more than a lingering glance.

Billy watches him go, watches him chase after Wheeler, and he _burns._ That’d been the fight he was itching for, and it’d slipped through his fingers.

Later, when he watches him leave the party, Billy decides that, just maybe, Steve Harrington could be a friend.

He’s without his bitch now, and guys always go back to the safety of their old thrones when they get dumped. It makes them feel powerful and in control, and the last thing Billy needs is for Harrington to swoop back in and steal the crown. He can’t lose that, can’t lose the reputation and the safety net, but Harrington could be a good person to know. Old money and good weed are about the only praises Hagan ever sang, and Billy can use that. Billy can use _him._

Yeah, maybe taunting him before throwing him to the floor isn’t his _best_ idea, but he’s not being _mean_ about it. He’s putting Harrington in his place, reminding him that Billy is on top now, but he’s not out to hurt him. He feels like he succeeds just a little bit, too, takes the edge off of whatever remnants of being broken up with were rolling inside of him, because Harrington kind of smiles at him in the midst of his grimace, even rolls his eyes when Billy wags his tongue at him. 

Harrington plays well, and Billy understands why he’s the captain. He’s just distracted today, lost all inside his head after getting dumped, and Billy’s fixing that. Drawing his attention, focusing his fire, and he’s thriving on it. Because Harrington is looking at him, sizing him up, viewing him for the challenge he is.

And then he’s not looking anymore, called away by the Wheeler bitch, and Billy is burning all over again. He decides he hates her then and there. Sure, it’ll be nice if Harrington is out of the picture again, pussy-whipped and pliant and non-threatening, but Billy was kind of looking forward to finding out who King Steve was. 

It must not go well, though, because Harrington comes back inside with a new kind of fire, laser-focused on the game, and shirts win. Billy’s impressed, even goes as far as to clap him on the shoulder later, and his grin is all teeth when Harrington rolls his eyes. Hagan hovers nearby like a lost dog, and Billy figures he might as well bring his master home. Hawkins has room for two kings.

He keeps pushing for it, keeps sticking himself in Harrington’s space and making sure he sees him, makes sure those eyes are on him and not on Wheeler, and he does a good job. It’s just the right mix of antagonizing him and teasing him, just the right mix of putting him in his place and building him up, that Billy successfully keeps him occupied. His eyes are only on Billy, big and brown and finally, _finally_ showing that spark of a challenge, until Hagan opens his big fucking mouth. 

The eye contact in the shower is something else, and Billy’s overdoing it, and he’s going to get caught, but then Hagan brings up Wheeler, and Billy’s perfect little plan falls to pieces. He tries his best to salvage it, makes sure Harrington understands that he’s leaving him girls because he can, but the spark is gone. Billy’s livid. They don’t shoot the shit in math like they had the day before.

Steve Harrington, Billy quickly learns, is a liar and a threat.

Every thought he’d had about the boy, from thinking he was hot to thinking they could be friends, flies out the window when Harrington _lies to him_ about his shitty step-sister being inside a stranger’s house. The front window is broken and it looks like a fucking drug shack and Harrington _lies to him_ and Billy is _burning._ His shoulders hurt and his cheek stings and he’s inside before he knows it, loose threads of Harrington’s members only jacket caught under his ring.

Billy’s not proud of how he acts, but the second he sees Sinclair, there are lives on the line, and he’s not going to be the one responsible for a bunch of kids dying. He knows his dad, knows what he’ll do, and he’s not going to let it happen. He’s not going to hurt the kid -just wants to scare him- and in hindsight, nobody else knows that. They’re not supposed to know it, anyway. He’s burning with panic and anger and betrayal and hate and then Harrington is _hitting him,_ and that’s all the permission he needs.

It’s not big brown eyes anymore, not a face dotted with moles and determination, that Billy slams his fists into. At some point, Harrington morphs into Neil, and Billy forgets to feel bad -forgets to stop- because this is cathartic. He goes and he goes and he goes until something fucking stabs him, and then he’s pulling a needle out of his neck and Max is standing over him. He can’t see, can’t focus, can’t breathe. His knuckles hurt and all he can think about now is how he’s going to die.

He doesn’t die, obviously. Billy wakes up hours later and his car is gone and his knuckles are bloody. He sits and he stares for too long, eyes unseeing as he comes to terms with what he’d done, but then he’s angry all over again. Harrington _lied to him_ and drove his car off and took Maxine with him, and now Billy is going to be punished for it. Harrington deserved it and Billy revels in that even as fear rolls like thunder in his chest cavity. 

Billy’s face is just as bad as Harrington’s when he sees him next. It’s Monday, and they both get benched in basketball, and Harrington won’t look at him. Hagan congratulates Billy for beating him up, tells him all about how Harrington deserves it and Billy agrees even if he barely believes it. Tells himself he believes it until he does.

Steve Harrington quits basketball, and Billy decides that he’s a coward.

He won’t look at him anymore. It’s almost like Harrington is purposely avoiding him, and Billy thrives on it. They promote him to captain and he fully moves into the position Harrington had vacated, crown and throne and girls on each arm. They hang on his every word, bask in his presence like he’s the sun and Billy’s living for it. This is the recognition he deserves. After everything he’s had to put up with, this is the way people should treat him. They should worship the ground he walks on.

Math comes, though, just as it does every day, and Billy glances to the desk at his side.

Steve Harrington is a husk.

He looks- empty. So empty that Billy has to do a double-take just to make sure he’s not fucking dead at his desk. His eyes are dull and spacey, looking somewhere out the window that Billy can’t follow, the bags under them deep and bruise purple. His breath is shallow, barely there, chest only just rising and Billy panics, makes sure to knock extra hard against his shoulder when he stands up to leave class. Harrington's eyes slide to meet his slowly, and there’s nothing there. There's no fire in Billy’s chest this time, either. Just cold, solid dread.

Billy notices him everywhere now, not that he ever stopped. He’d made a point to ignore it before, but now Harrington is everywhere, a ghost with a fake smile and practiced cheer. He’s at the arcade, in the parking lot, at the houses where Max goes for her nerd game. He’s always there and yet he isn’t, and Billy doesn’t _like that._ Harrington had been so full of fire and now he’s just- not. Billy _hates it._

It’s mid-January, and Billy’s pulling up outside the Wheeler’s to pick up Max, and Harrington is there. Billy offers him a cigarette, antagonizes and teases, and Harrington cracks the smallest smile. There’s a spark in those brown eyes when they meet his, and Billy catches fire.

Billy never apologizes for the night in November, and Harrington never asks him about the bruises he knows he saw. It’s a mutual agreement, a quiet coexistence, and it burns under Billy’s skin like magma whenever Harrington smiles at him. His eyes are still tired and the bags are still bruising and his cheeks are still hollow, but Harrington is smiling at him with less grimace and more amusement, and Billy feels like he’s succeeded.

Steve Harrington, Billy realizes early one morning after a dream he wishes he’d never had, is a threat (again).

But this time, instead of threatening his safety with lies, he does it by just existing. Billy’s never fallen down a hole like this so quickly, never drowned in a smile or a brush of fingers so fast. There’s never been something more threatening than how he knows he looks at Steve, never been something more damning than the racing of his heart whenever Steve so much as breathes in his direction. The simple brush of their fingers when they share a cigarette is a death sentence, and Billy’s willing to risk it all for more. 

It culminates all at once. They’re supposed to be watching a movie in Steve’s den, supposed to be making fun of it, but Billy picked one he knew Steve wouldn’t follow because he just wanted the guy to get some sleep. And sleep he did, head heavy on Billy’s shoulder and wisps of brown hair in Billy’s mouth, and he's reveling in it. This is the closest they’d ever get, pressed together from shoulder to knee. It’s dangerous and so wrong but Billy’s heart is racing with it, high off the smell of Steve’s cologne and his stupid rich boy hair spray, and he’s never been more sure of anything. 

Steve jolts, though, whimpers and thrashes and cries, and he shoves himself into Billy’s arms mere moments after screaming himself awake, and suddenly Billy gets it. He goes to ask, wants to pry, but then Steve is kissing him, rushed and too salty with tears, but he doesn’t care. He pushes back until Steve is flat on his back, kisses him breathless, and revels in this, too, revels in the fact that he’s taking his own demise apart underneath him. Steve is beautiful and so beyond forbidden, and every part of him lights a fire in Billy’s chest that he won’t make any attempt to extinguish.

It snows again in March, because it’s fucking _Indiana,_ and Billy learns that Steve Harrington is a shield.

Granted, in the moment, Billy would much rather call him a reckless bastard with a deathwish, but the statement stands. 

Max sneaks out and Billy goes after her, nose throbbing from where Neil had shoved him down into the edge of the counter. He’s not going to have a repeat of November, not going to get his ass handed to him for something she’s done. Even if his boots aren’t keeping the cold of the snow out and he’s freezing and burning hot with anger all at once, he pushes on. He’s not putting up with this again.

Then the woods start fucking _chirping,_ clicking and screaming from somewhere in the white of the trees, and Billy starts to wonder what the fuck is wrong with Hawkins, Indiana. He can see Max’s red hair in the distance and he picks up his pace, ready to grab her and get the hell out of these woods when something slams into his back and sends him tumbling forward into the snow. He manages to flip over onto his back before it’s on top of him, and Billy realizes with a growing sense of horror that it _doesn’t have a face._

Until it does- its head splits open in five flower petals and reveals rows upon rows of teeth, and Billy screams. The thing digs its claws -it has _claws-_ into his side, almost like it’s taunting him, and then a shadow passes over Billy’s body as the thing is ripped from his torso and flung into a tree across the way. 

Max is there then, pulling him up by his hands and glancing fretfully over her shoulder, and all Billy can do is watch in dumb fascination as Steve plants himself _-plants his feet-_ between the flower faced thing and the two of them. He’s got the godawful nail bat loose in his hands, swinging as he whistles almost tauntingly. 

It’s fucking _sexy._

It becomes increasingly less sexy when Steve starts dancing away from the thing, leading it away from Billy and Max as it jumps and snaps at him, tearing into the sleeve of his coat when he doesn’t move fast enough. Billy’s breath catches when red slides out of Steve’s sleeve and drips onto the snow. It’s like everything moves in slow motion: the monster, spurred by the sense that it’s hurt him, pushes off of the snow like a cat and makes directly for Steve’s head. Steve twirls the bat twice as he swings it up onto his shoulder, and then he launches outward, the nails connecting with the thing’s skull in a sickening crack.

The monster hits the ground and tries to push itself up, tries to shake off the hit, but Steve is on it too fast. He brings the bat down a second time, and a third, not stopping until the creature’s skull is a pile of black sludge in the now dirty snow. 

Billy is frozen still, watching Steve’s chest heave with each breath he takes, watching him unstick the nail bat from the remains of whatever the fuck that thing had been, and suddenly Billy is incredibly turned on. Confused? Sure. Scared out of his damn mind? Absolutely. But he’s far more familiar with being turned on -especially by Steve- so he leans into that. It’s a much better type of adrenaline than being terrified, anyway.

They walk Max home together, help her up into her bedroom, and then Billy goes back with Steve to his car, to his big empty house. They bandage each other up, and Steve tells him about everything wrong with Hawkins. He tells him about his pool and the lab and the tunnels, the little girl that Max is so fond of being a lab experiment with actual superpowers, monsters from an alternate dimension that are attracted by blood and hate the heat. They lie in Steve’s bed together and Billy finally figures out where all of Steve’s nightmares come from.

Steve Harrington, after everything Billy has seen, becomes a shelter.

Billy understands why the kids flock to him now. He’s always kind of had an idea, after all, considering how desperate he was for Steve’s attention before he’d even realized it. But he really understands it now, all this time later, after watching Steve kill an actual nightmare and then somehow manage to bandage the cut on Billy’s side with such gentleness that it nearly made him cry. He gets it, now. 

Steve doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t push, just cares for and holds and asks for nothing in return. He gives and he gives and Billy thinks he might love him for it. Steve is safety and warmth, a balm to his bruises and a kiss to each of his cheeks. Steve is scalding rage on his behalf the first time Billy ever comes to him after Neil, but his hands are still soft and there’s no pity in those big brown eyes, and Billy knows he loves him.

April comes and Billy turns eighteen, and he gets an acceptance letter from UCLA. He’s getting out of Hawkins as soon as they’re allowed to move into the dorms, riding his full scholarship with a high that can’t be matched. Steve is only warm congratulations and genuine support, and Billy has never felt more whole.

They both get their summer jobs, and they spend almost all of their time together, and Billy feels himself grow soft. He’s secure by Steve’s side, sheltered from all of the things that would do him harm the moment Steve’s fingers brush his.

When the world ends in July, when Tommy gets possessed by the Mind Flayer and kills thirty-some people, Steve is solid and sure and Billy has never been more grateful. Even half-high off whatever the Russians below Starcourt Mall pumped into his system, Steve throws himself into danger to save everyone he can. He crashes into Tommy’s car, launches fireworks with the girl Heather is crushing on from the top floor, shouts cheesy lines like he’s some kind of action movie hero.

And when Tommy crumples to the ground, bleeding red and black and nearly dead, Steve is at his side in an instant. He’s dead before Billy grounds himself and sinks to his knees on Tommy’s other side, but Steve must have said something right, because the freckled face Billy spent most of his senior year hating is frozen in some kind of morbid death smile. 

Steve makes sure everyone is okay, checks on all the kids and Buckley and Heather, flutters around Billy while the paramedics make sure he’s okay, too. He rounds an ambulance and then he’s sinking to his knees not even a minute later, sobs bubbling out of his throat and into the meat of Billy’s shoulder. It’s something Billy’s only ever dealt with a few times, the sheer breakdown that comes with too much stress and too many emotions. Billy just holds him, rocks him back and forth even if people can see them, and he lets Steve take shelter in him. 

Steve Harrington, Billy learns -he’s always learning, isn’t he?- is a promise.

They make the drive to California together. Steve made sure it would happen, took all of the allowance his parents had left for him and put it into the bank account where the payouts from the government had been going, and sent in an application to Santa Monica Community College. He got in, and he got them a little apartment not far from the beach, and he did it all with a smile. Max cries when they leave, makes them promise to visit, and they do. 

When they finally get there, and all of their minuscule furniture is in its place and they’re laying on the air mattress in the bedroom, Billy cries. He got out. Steve told him he would, told him that even if Billy stopped hoping he’d make it happen, and he did. Billy tries to thank him without words and Steve simply grins at him, presses kisses along his cheekbones, and tells him that it was all Billy. He cries more, then, and Steve wipes his tears with that same warm smile he'd fallen in love with.

They both get jobs, work hard in everything they do, and they make it. 

Steve buys him a thick silver band the same day Billy buys him a slim one, and even if it’s not legal, it’s theirs. They kiss and they laugh and maybe they cry a little bit, but they made it. Out of Neil’s house, out of Hawkins, out of their own heads and into each other’s arms. Billy made it here, and Steve came with him, just like he promised.

Above all else, Billy learns that Steve Harrington is his, and his alone.

**Author's Note:**

> i got this brain itch i had to scratch so i just fuckin ZOOM WROTE THIS BAYBEE CHOO CHOO


End file.
